This week on the podcast Whitson discovers he was using Evernote wrong, Thorin realizes he stopped pirating media by accident, and Dachis learns fancy toothpaste is a waste of money. Also, we discuss alternatives to the moribund Google Reader and, as always, answer your questions.

Sorry about our live feed this week—it died! Google had some sort of issue and just stopped recording, so unfortunately we're audio-only again this week (unless you want to just watch the first six minutes). We're looking at other solutions since we've heard a few complaints about choppy live streams with Google Hangouts, so hopefully we'll have a better option in the near future. Thanks for bearing with us!

Questions and Answers

Each week we answer five questions from readers and listeners. Here's what we tackled this week.

Any suggestions for encrypting a Windows 8 machine? I don't have Windows 8 Pro, so BitLocker is not included and I have a GPT partition so TrueCrypt won't work. You're not the only one with this problem. We couldn't find a solution, but if anyone knows of an encryption program that will work with GPT, let us know.

How do I stop my custom notification sounds from resetting on my Android ICS phone every time I sync? We don't know what you're syncing with, but chances are the MP3 custom tones are being re-written each time you sync. Stop syncing those tones and hopefully it'll resolve the issue. If not, call/write back with more information and we'll come up with another idea for you.

I'm getting unwanted texts from various numbers that seem to be from the same person. Should I just change my phone number, or is there a way to smoke out the identity of this person or block them? You probably will want to change your number. If you don't have some sort of emotional attachment to your number, that's the easiest method. If you do, try these methods.

Are you excited for the Samsung Galaxy IV Announcement? It'll probably be a great phone, but no, not really. Nexus or bust.

What's the big deal about RSS? It makes it easy to aggregate all the stuff you want to read and save the important stuff for later in services like Instapaper, Pocket, and Readability. It makes our jobs easier because we can scan through a lot of stuff really quickly. It also causes a need for information enemas, which are possibly more pleasant than regular ones?

How Do I Submit a Question?

Please keep your questions as brief as possible. This means about 3-5 sentences for emails and 30-60 seconds for calls and videos. Your questions can be specific, but broader questions are generally better because they'll apply to more people. For example, "how can I breathe new life into my old PDA?" is much better than "what can I do with an old HP iPAQ 210?" Either way, we look forward to hearing from you!